Cloudstreet , Tim Winton’s homage to his homeland in Perth Australia has been kicking about for a few years. Winton wrote an afterword in 2015. Sometime you find a book and sometimes a book finds you. The novel I’m rewriting has many of the features of Cloudstreet . If it ever hits the light of day…well, we’ll see. I’m not really sure who the narrator of Cloudsteet is and being a pretend writer I’m usually pretty good at hiding that kind of...

*Picture - Jarrolds! Leggings – Mad Activities! Outside the flat the world moves on. The city is crowded with shoppers, not entirely trusting a bargain, yet out for a good time on a Saturday Afternoon... Oh hey the radio announcer is at it again, reading this out as I think it out. Don't mind readers have a wonderful time! Every shop I went into seemed to have some interaction with the negative groups, in the clothes shop where I exchanged some...

2018; a new year, new beginnings. This is always the hardest part of the year to write; cold mornings, going to work and coming home in the dark. Inspiration levels are turned all the way to 11 on cyrogenic and distractions abound - I find it easy not to draft anything; only thumbnail sketches - pencil smears in my notebook. Every year, we start out with good intentions, only to watch them fall like nine-pins by the middle of the month. Sins are...

Leggings – Strange Requests... Since yesterday of bouts of them waiting about for deliveries which didn't come (to my knowledge) or in case I bought something online, so that they could read my mind at some arcane point, and take any monies or good s that they could... They started to make strange requests for me to open a time tunnel. “We waiting until you do,” snarled one of them. “You did it last time! You got us all through!” “Even if I did...

Posted by airyfairy on Fri, 05 Jan 2018 Maybe because it's January, the gateway of the year, looking forward and back, that we have had a particularly rich lot of contributions involving life writing and/or the construction of memory. They've been a joy to read. Story of the Week goes to Stephen Thom's 'Where The Good Things Go'. It's a complex and rewarding read or, indeed, several reads, exploring the construction of memory and reality: https...

Maybe because it's January, the gateway of the year, looking forward and back, that we have had a particularly rich lot of contributions involving life writing and/or the construction of memory. They've been a joy to read. Story of the Week goes to Stephen Thom's 'Where The Good Things Go'. It's a complex and rewarding read or, indeed, several reads, exploring the construction of memory and reality: https://www.abctales.com/story/stephen-thom/...

ABCTALES READING – LONDON, 3rd FEBRUARY We’re happy to announce our next abctales readings evening, all set to take place in London on Saturday, 3rd February. Yes, a Saturday! We’ve been thinking that holding it on a weekend might give more of you a chance to take part than on a school night … and give us more time for socialising before and after the event. It’s an opportunity for anyone to come along and read their work – poetry or prose – to...

If a writer’s heart beats within me…I’m certainly feeling its rhythm today. Words are warring in my head as I puzzle over a new chapter…but it isn’t annoying…for me...it’s an adventure. Creating the events unfolding in my mind…giving voices to thoughts…moving characters along in strategic chess moves…all leading up to a powerful ending….hopefully a powerful ending…but that chapter is yet to be written... When I can be one with my thoughts…no...

The story behind the story of Sugar Money seems the usual hokum of a neighbour digging out an unpublished manuscript which turns out to be the extraordinary story of Lucien, a ten-year old slave boy. How he and his elder brother Emile, in a few weeks in December 1765, got involved in a remarkable attempt to liberate slaves from slavery and bring them back into, em, slavery. Read the title again and you’ll understand – money. When money is...

Why is Exmouth's only well-known female writer (1919-1999) almost invisible? The Guardian and the Independent both describe her poetry as 'wry.' Wry rhymes with 'shy', the vowels of wry chime with 'irony'. No mention of passion, fire, humour, bite. The lace curtain of 'wry' sells her short, ignores her often present precision and anger. Her swipe at her father, who lived his working life 'from puberty to impotence' as a railway clerk at Exeter...